Suppose this was a Hollywood script conference and you have to pitch your story
idea in 10 words or less. It's a movie about Syria. As much as the currently
in-research Kathryn Hurt Locker Bigelow film about the Osama bin Laden
raid was pitched as "good guys take out Osama in Pakistan", the Syrian epic
could be branded "Sunnis and Shi'ites battle for Arab republic".

Yes, once again this is all about that fiction, the "Shi'ite crescent", about
isolating Iran and about Sunni prejudice against Shi'ites.

The hardcore Sunni Wahhabi House of Saud - in yet another towering show of
hypocrisy, and faithful to its hatred of secular

True, Assad's ferocious security apparatus does not help - having killed over
2,400 people since unrest erupted in March. That is much more, incidentally,
than Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces had killed in Libya when United Nations
Resolution 1973 was rushed in to allow foreign interventions. The Diogenes the
Cynic response to this "where's the UN" discrepancy would be that Syria, unlike
Libya, is not sitting on immense oil and gas wealth.

The Assad regime issues from the Alawite Shi'ite sub-sect. Thus, for the House
of Saud, this means Sunnis are being killed. And, to add insult to injury, by a
regime aligned with Shi'ite Iran.

Thus, the Saudi condemnation, followed by minions of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), also known as the Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Club, plus the
toothless, Saudi-manipulated Arab League. To top it off, House of Saud and Gulf
wealth is actively financing the more unsavory strand of Syrian protests - the
radicalized Muslim Brotherhood/fundamentalist/Salafi nebula.

By contrast, the only thing pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain received from
the House of Saud and the GCC was an invasion, and outright repression.

Now for the Turkey shoot
Turkey's position is far more nuanced. The ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) is overwhelmingly Sunni. They are playing for the regional Sunni gallery.
But the AKP should be aware that at least 20% of Turks are Shi'ites from the
Alevi branch, and they have a lot of empathy with Syrian Allawis.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - the academic father of the
celebrated "zero problems with our neighbors" policy - this week spent no less
than six hours talking to Assad face-to-face in Damascus. He was deeply
enigmatic at his press conference, implying that the Assad regime ending the
crackdown and meeting the protesters' demands was a "process". Assad could
reply he had already started the "process" - but these things, such as free and
fair elections, take time.

Davutoglu explicitly said; "As we always underlined, our main criteria is that
the shape of the process must reflect only the will of the Syrian people." At
the moment, the regime would reply, the majority of the Syrian people seem to
be behind the government.

Davutoglu's words also seem to imply there's no reason for Turkey to interfere
in Syria as long as Damascus is reasonable and stops killing people (Assad
admitted "mistakes" were made) and introduces reforms. So the impression is
left that Davutoglu was contradicting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has vocally advocated for Turkey to "solve" the Syrian quagmire.

That would be Erdogan's way to prove to Saudi Arabia and Qatar that the Turkish
model is the way to go for the Arab world - assuming the Saudis and the Qataris
foot the bill for Erdogan to pose as the Great Liberator of Sunnis in Syria,
financing a Turkish army advance over Assad's forces. That certainly sounds
much more far-fetched now than it did a few days ago.

The Assad regime has done the math and realized it won't fall as long as the
protests don't reach the capital Damascus and the major city of Aleppo - that
is, convulse the urban middle class. The security/military apparatus is fully
behind Assad. All Syrian religious minorities make up at least 25% of the
population; they are extremely fearful of Sunni fundamentalists. Secular Sunnis
for their part fear a regime change that would lead to either an Islamist
takeover or chaos. So it's fair to argue the majority of Syrians are indeed
behind their government - as inept and heavy-handed as it may be.

Moreover, the Assad regime knows the conditions are not ripe for a Libyan-style
North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in Syria. There won't even
be a vote for a UN resolution - Russia and China have already made it clear.

Europe is melting - and it will hardly sign up for added ill-planned
adventurism. Especially after the appalling spectacle of those dodgy types of
the Libyan transitional council killing their military leader and fighting
their tribal wars in the open - with the added ludicrous touch of Britain
recognizing the "rebels" the same day they were killing and burning the body of
their "commander".

There's no reason for a Western "humanitarian intervention" under R2P
("responsibility to protect") because there's no humanitarian crisis; Somalia,
in fact, is the top humanitarian crisis at the moment, leading to fears that
Washington may in fact try to "invade" or at least try to control
strategically-crucial Somalia.

So the idea of the Barack Obama administration in the United States telling
Assad to pack up and go is dead on arrival as a game-changer. What if Assad
stays? Will Washington drone him to death - under the pretext of R2P? Well, the
Pentagon can always try to snuff him with an unmanned Falcon Hypersonic
Technology Vehicle-2 - the new toy "to respond to threats around the globe", in
Pentagon speak. But oops, there's a snag; the prototype hypersonic glider has
gone missing over the Pacific.